Starmobile officially unveils the new Starmobile Octa; Goes on Sale Next Week for Php 16,990

It seems that Starmobile is on a roll with releasing top notch smartphones this year, as the company unveiled a new flagship device during the #MakeItGr8 event held yesterday. Now we have details on the new flagship device succeeding the Diamond X1, which was released just less than 3 months ago.

One of the country’s top local mobile brand, Starmobile, had people guessing on the device’s name for the past week on their official Facebook page. But, the guessing game is now over, as Starmobile officially unveiled the name of the device, Octa, as well as the specs and other details on their next flagship phone.

Just to give you all a heads up, the Starmobile Octa has a lot of similar specs with the Diamond X1, but with additional features. First, it comes with a smaller 5 inch screen on full HD compared to the latter’s 6 inch HD/WXGA display. Under the hood, you’ll find the same 1.7 GHz octa core processor along with a 2GB of RAM. There’s also the same 18 megapixel BSI main camera and an 8 megapixel BSI front facing camera.

Image courtesy of Rappler.com

Sadly, there’s no microSD card slot here, but the Starmobile Octa makes up for it with an internal memory of 32 GB, which is considerably a big ROM when it comes to a smartphone by a local brand, as the usual is only at 8 to 16 GB. Another let down is the lack of LTE support and it doesn’t come with Android Kitkat 4.4, at least for now.

Image courtesy of Rappler.com

The Starmobile Octa comes with a couple of features that is a first for the company, as well as for any local mobile player. First, the device features Near Field Communication or NFC connectivity. There’s also the Mobile HD Link or MHL, an industry standard for connecting your phone to HDTV’s and audio receivers. But probably the coolest touch here is the wireless charging feature. You just have place the phone on top of the wireless charger that actually doubles as a Bluetooth speaker.

A lot may not be impressed with these added features, but it is actually quiet impressive. Even iPhones don’t support wireless charging, at least not out of the box.

As for the pricing, it is quiet hefty with a tag of Php 16,990. But with the specs and features, it can easily go head to head with phones from other brands priced at around Php 25k. The Starmobile Octa will go on sale starting next week and is available in two color options, Red and Black.